Felting: Color

Welcome to everyone who has just gotten their new Kiwi Knitting newsletter and class schedule by email or snail-mail, and are tuning in to our Kiwi Knits blog for the first time. We hope you enjoy our new endeavor into bringing you more of what you need and want from Kiwi Knitting, and would love to hear your feedback and suggestions. You will see 'Comments' in small type at the bottom of each post that takes you to a spot to leave comments. You can also email me, Lynda Sorenson (Blog Mistress) directly at Lynda@Kiwiknitting.com Help us to make this blog the resource that you want to see in the Tucson fiber community.

Now that Lynn has finished the Herculean effort it requires to fit the puzzle pieces of several teachers with several classes each of varying number of sessions into the new Fall class schedule, we are hoping for her to have a spare few minutes to unpack the delicious Malabrigo yarns that have just come into the shop so that I can show them to you. Til then, I thought I would give you a bit of a preview of one of my upcoming classes in the Kiwi Fall quarter.

As I mentioned to you last week, I have become more and more fascinated by the textural transformations that take place when knitted and/or crocheted pieces are felted. In addition to this, both colorwork and lace knitting have become ever greater addictions for me. At the moment, I am designing and knitting a jacket from Noro's Kureyon - with its ever-intriguing color transitions, and working on a lace stole in Zephyr wool/silk lace yarn. Then there is the luscious Fair Isle cardigan waiting in the wings, swatched and all ready to go that I am absolutely dying to start, just as soon as I get a little farther ahead in my class samples.

So when I have all these various projects simmering away in their baskets (and you know how they each have to have their own basket, don't you?), eventually all those individual ideas start to leak out of their assigned corners in my mind and begin to meld together. Hence the Fair Isle cardi that I won't allow myself to start just yet surfaces as designing and knitting a felted Fair Isle bag because somehow in my own peculiar form of reasoning I can justify a quicker project that satisfies that FI urge right now. Instant gratification, a knitting snack that will tide me over until I can sit down and start the turkey-with-all-the-trimmings project of the knitting world.

In my upcoming felting tech classes I want to open your eyes and your mind to incorporating traditional knitting techniques into felted projects. Once you have a taste for what can happen, I believe that there will be no limits to how you can transform simple felted projects into anything you want, the only limit being what you can imagine.

In the Felting: Color class to be held this Saturday, Aug. 4th from 10 -12, we'll explore using Fair Isle and slip stitch Mosaic knitting techniques to bring some spice to any project. In class we'll make up some swatches for you to felt at home, and discuss machine and hand felting techniques that will help you to achieve a more dependable result in your felting projects. The samples above give you a taste of what can be achieved when you combine color and felting. You don't have to already know any of this in order to fit into the class and walk out with new techniques under your belt. Come in, have fun, and learn something new!

Lynda